San Diego State 74, University of Dayton 62

This is my first day of winter break and I’m still recovering from 16 weeks of school, so I’ll let the San Diego State PR people that I met before the game tell tonight’s game story. They did it well.

This was my first time seeing the Aztecs, and I was especially impressed with Courtney Clements, who seems to be able to do everything. Big ups to Coco Davis for her career high, and I think they should call Paris Johnson “the natural,” because she makes it look so easy. Dayton’s Justine Raterman lead Dayton with 17 points.

Dayton has a lot of team spirit; they did long team cheers in the tunnel before the game.

SDSU Coach Beth Burns crouches a lot when she coaches, and she conducts timeouts the old-fashioned way: she grabs a clipboard and sits down. Those currently not on the court then walk behind the bench and stand behind the seated players for the choir effect, to listen to Burns.

Both teams are talkers, so there was a lot of talking and screaming and yelling on court tonight. Loved it.

Dayton has some nice defense, but they miss a lot of easy shots and layups. I was surprised they had a 5-4 record going into tonight’s game. But IM in OC, who was chillin with me, looked up their past opponents and they were smaller schools. That made sense.

The Aztecs are a very tall team that likes to block and deflect shots. I wish they’d count shot and pass deflections in the stats, because they had so many tonight.

Another thing I like about SDSU is they have both an inside and outside game – sometimes they’ll drive, and sometimes they’ll shoot. Quite often teams just have one or the other (think LA Sparks), so the Aztecs are refreshing.

The other game in today’s tournament at USC was the host team vs. Colorado. I didn’t see that one, but IM said the Trojans had a 20-point lead that they let dwindle when bench players were given time. Nevertheless, USC pulled it out 68-54.

Tomorrow Dayton and Colorado will play at 3 p.m. and SDSU and USC will play for the championship at 5:30 p.m.